Rafael Trujillo Research Paper

In the 1960s a significant amount of migration from the Dominican Republic to the United States began. Dictator Rafael Trujillo was killed by rebels in 1961 and financial and political turmoil was created leading into the Dominican Civil War. The U.S. military and other government agencies intervened in the chaos and eventually invaded Dominican Republic. The Dominican immigrant population to the United States increased because of this. There were 12,000 Dominican immigrants in 1960, afterwards reaching 350,000 in 1990. One women in that statistics of immigration was Maria Pena Estrella, a 23 year old married women, escaping illegally in October 1969 as Lucia Felly to live the “American Dream” or how she called it “el gran Sueño Americano”. Maria Pena Estrella, was born on June 3rd 1946 in Santiago, Dominican Republic to a Dominican farmer and house-wife. She lived in the country side in a small yellow bricked home with cracked and peeling walls and a dented tin roof. She was one of the 14 siblings in her small home. Her brothers helped out her father in the farm …show more content…
The Cold War caused the U.S to fear the spread of communism and “another Cuba” in the Dominican Republic which led to this invasion. Before the Civil War and U.S invasion, in 1961, Dictator Rafael Trujillo was assassinated causing political instability. Maria was terrified of her country’s standing, in a translation from Spanish she stated, “Our president was assassinated, we were in war, and invaded by the U.S. I did not sleep, I could not.” Her husband Aquilino presented the solution to leave the Dominican Republic as soon as possible. Aquilino’s sister, Lou Pena a permanent resident of the U.S, lived in New York and could provide a home while they were there. However, they had no immigration paper work and it would take too long to go in legally. She had to leave, and it had to be done

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